Calcou “Below”

Multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer Calcou shared the colourful video for his latest single, ‘Below’ released on the 22nd of April. The single is the third to be shared from his upcoming EP, Places which will be released on the 20th of May via MfDR+C. The single is mastered by Brian Sanhaji (Charlotte De Witte and Pan Pot) and has been supported by CLASH Magazine, Son Of Marketing, Indie Shuffle, Stereofox and House Music With Love and picked up by Spotify for their Fresh Finds and Fresh Finds Dance playlists.

As a producer, Calcou has worked with a wide range of well-known brands including Universal Music, Majestic Casual, L’Oréal and Ferrero to name a few. His debut single, ‘Lfost’ was chosen by the Berlin music commission to represent Berlin’s infamous sound and later picked up by the Spotify editorial team while his following releases regularly climb to the top of Hype Machine.

Mahir Duman, a visual artist, tells us about the creation of the video for ‘Below’: “I have created the video by using artificial intelligence. We discussed a lot in advance how the video could reflect Calcou’s approach to composing and sound selection, leaving room for the unexpected and random. So I chose to use pre-trained StyleGAN2, but left them purposefully undertrained to be as abstract as possible. When the AI was finished, I took back control and I fine-tuned everything, using five different types of videos and mixing, recolouring and reforming them. During the process, I felt like being in a deep ocean, figuring out forms and colours and merging them into something new. It was a very creative process and I’m happy to see that we’ve facilitated the creation of multiple forms of expressions in one pot.”

In the visualizer, the colourful tapestries find themselves entwining with the rolling rhythmic grooves as each melody is cheerfully highlighted. Kaleidoscopic with its twists and turns, the video manages to provide the perfect backdrop to the song as the downtempo beats make themselves at home.

Born in Tübingen and currently based in Berlin, Germany, Calcou is a classically trained composer who carries his creative background as a jazz pianist with pride, defining his music as a space where jazz meets Chill and Deep House blends into Electronica. While creating music, the artist finds inspiration in the works of Kiasmos, Bonobo, Christian Löffler, Caribou and Dj Koze while his latest release calls to mind the likes of Fejká, Janus Rasmussen and Rohne.

-Official bio